Charvel Guitars

Charvel shares DNA and deep roots with Jackson guitars, and in the late 1970s it was Grover Jackson who built the first guitars bearing the Charvel name. Jackson had worked at Charvel’s Guitar Repair, a small shop in Azusa, Calif., that specialized in hot-rodding traditional electric guitars, before he bought the company from founder Wayne Charvel in late 1978. Jackson quickly began building traditional-style electric guitars loaded with high-performance refinements, to which he applied the Charvel name. The guitars debuted in summer 1979 and steadily gained acclaim, especially among a flashy new early-’80s generation of dazzlingly talented Southern California guitarists. In addition to those fine early Charvel instruments, Jackson soon embarked on a second line of guitars bearing his own name. But from those late-’70s days onward, Charvel forged its own distinctive identity and earned its own sterling reputation for producing hot-rodded-yet-classy “muscle car” guitars preferred by many of the world’s most technically accomplished players, notably in the metal and fusion worlds. In each era since its arrival—the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and right on through to today—Charvel has offered innovative and original guitar models with the very best in high-performance design and features. With the modern-era Desolation series, several remarkable artist models and the time-honored San Dimas and So-Cal models, Charvel continues to forge a very bright high-performance future for guitarists everywhere.